The present invention relates to an arrangement for closing bottles, including a rotor which moves the bottles along a partially circular path, a flanging device with a flanging element engaging the lower edge of the caps to be applied on the flanges, and bottle gripping elements connected with the rotors.
Arrangement of the above mentioned general type are known in the art. One of such arrangements is disclosed for example in the British Patent Document GB-PS 1,365,978. In this arrangement the flange element provided with an arcuately extending edge is composed of a substantially sickle-shaped immovable rail or strip arranged at a radial distance from the partially circular path and outwardly of the path. The arcuate edge which operates during the flanging, is located at the inner side of the flanging rail which faces the respective outer side of the passing bottles. The stationary flanging rail is formed substantially as a circular segment. It is held by two spaced forks on the pin extending between the respective fork legs. A compensation spring is arranged between each leg of each fork and the flange rail. Both forks are mounted on a curved bridge part which in turn is height-adjustable along a vertical support and fixable in respective positions. Sleeves arranged on the bridge part serve for a horizontal adjustment. Both forks are adjustable horizontally by adjusting screws and against the force of the springs. In view of this construction, arrangement and support the flange device is rather complicated. It requires a number of individual structural elements and therefore is expensive and failure prone. The horizontal adjustment of the flange rail is performed by respective adjustment of the forks by means of the horizontal adjustment screws. This adjustment is time consuming and complicated. It is difficult to obtain the accurately designed position of the flange rail by this horizontal adjustment. Also, the vertical adjustment of the flange rail is similarly time consuming and difficult, since for this purpose the bridge part which holds both forks must be displaced along the vertical support and fixed in respective positions. During the flanging process the rotatable bottles pass the inner, curved shaped edge of the flange rail. First each bottle at one end of the flange rail runs in this region. Therefore there is a high degree of danger that the bottle will hook during this running in. Also, accurate adjustment of the flange element should be considered as extraordinarily critical. A further disadvantage is that this known arrangement must be adjusted completely anew in correspondence with the new bottle format. The format adjustment here is extraordinarily time consuming and complicated. During conversion to a different bottle height and especially cap diameter, not only a suitable new flange rail must be mounted and adjusted, but also the rotary speed of the rotor and/or the bottle gripper must be adjusted correspondingly. Each conversion to a different format requires complicated adjustment works in the known arrangement. Moreover, it is disadvantageous that the flange device is arranged at the edge. It requires some additional space, which is especially disadvantageous since in this region very narrow space conditions prevail. Moreover, this arrangement affects a reliable cleaning and especially sterilization of the machine, especially during sterilizing aeration from above with laminar flow. It is further disadvantageous that the flange rail in the known arrangement requires a great radius to insure that with a certain minimum peripheral angular extension of the flange rail during rotation of the bottles along it the flanging process is completely closed. This contradicts the goals of compact constructions having as small diameter as possible. Furthermore it contradicts the tendency to provide a quiet bottle running with low noise generation and material loading.